The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (2 page)

This, then, is a study of woman’s lot: it is not intended as a dictionary of female biography in the seventeenth century, nor for that matter as an encyclopedia of women’s topics. I have selected those characters who interested me; omissions were not only inevitable, if the book was not to be of mammoth size, but also deliberate.

Obviously, no one writes in a vacuum, and to boast of being unswayed by the currents of opinion swirling about in one’s own time would be, like most boasts, foolish. During the twelve years in which I have been taking notes towards this book, the growth of feminism both as a force and an influence has been a spectacular phenomenon. But this book is, I hope, a historical work, not a tract. After all, to write about women it is not necessary to be a woman, merely to have a sense of justice and sympathy; these qualities are not, or should not be, the prerogative of one sex.

I have taken the usual liberties in correcting spelling and punctuation where it seemed necessary to make sense to the reader today. For the same reason I have ignored the fact that the calendar year was held to start on 25 March during this period, and have used the modern style of dates starting on 1 January throughout. This is an age which presents considerable problems
to the writer, where the nomenclature of women is concerned. On the one hand, many of the them bore the same Christian name: in a host of Marys, Elizabeths and Annes, one learns to be grateful for the odd Jemima. On the other hand, equally confusingly, women at this period changed their surnames with frequency, due to marriage and remarriage. Sometimes, therefore, it has proved convenient to use a pet-name or diminutive consistently for a particular character; sometimes I have used the same surname or rank for a woman throughout the book (as for example Margaret ‘Godolphin’, antedating her marriage, and Margaret ‘Duchess’ of Newcastle, despite the changes in her husband’s title). My aim in all this has been clarity for the reader.

I wish to thank the Marquess of Bath for permission to quote from the Longleat
MSS
, and Miss Jane Fowles, Librarian and Archivist to the Marquess of Bath; Miss Cathleen Beaudoin, Reference Librarian of the Public Library, Dover, New Hampshire, for letting me see the Jon Scale
MS
on Quaker women; and the Wardens, Melvin and Sandra Roberts, of the Religious Society of Friends, Nottingham Meeting, for permission to quote from the letter of Isabel (Fell) Yeamans. I am grateful to the staff of numerous libraries, principal among them the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Institute of Historical Research, the London Library and the New York Public Library.

I should also like to express my thanks to the following, who helped me in a variety of different ways over the years, from answering queries to conducting stimulating conversations: Dr Maurice Ashley; Professor John Barnard; Mr G.P. Bartholomew; Dr Chalmers Davidson; Mr Fram Dimshaw; Lt. Col. John Dymoke of Scrivelsby; Mr Peter Elstob; Miss Jane Ferguson, Librarian to the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh; Mr John Fowles; Ms Valerie Fildes; Reverend Mother M. Gregory
IBVM
; Pauline Gregg; Mrs Cicely Havely; Mr Cyril Humphris; P.J. Le Fevre; Sir Oliver Millar; Mr G.C.E. Morris; Sir Iain Moncrieffe of that Ilk; Mr Richard Ollard; Professor Elaine Pagels; Mr Derek Parker; Professor J.H. Plumb; Mr Anthony Powell; Dr Mary Prior; the Duke of Rutland; Ms Sally Shreir; Lady Anne Somerset; Emma Tennant; Miss Dorothy Tutin;
Brigadier Peter Young.

Over the years I have much appreciated professional support from my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, John Curtis of Weidenfeld and Nicolson and Robert Gottlieb of Knopf. In addition, I am deeply indebted to my daughter Flora Powell-Jones for her assiduous researches; to Mrs Hatherley d’Abo who showed herself a heroine typing the manuscript; to Linden Lawson of Weidenfeld’s for patient editorial overseeing; to Dr Malcolm Cooper for the Chronology and to Gila Falkus for the Index.

Lastly I would like to acknowledge with affection and gratitude three early readers of the book: my mother, to whom it is justly dedicated; my daughter Rebecca; and my husband, who was, as he is fond of pointing out, ‘the first’.

ANTONIA FRASER

All Hallows Eve, 1983

Chronology of Important Events 1603–1702

1603
Death of Elizabeth I; accession of James I

1605
Discovery of the Gunpowder Plot

1611
Publication of the Authorized Version of the Bible

1614
The Addled Parliament

1616
Death of William Shakespeare

1620
Pilgrim Fathers sail for America

1621
Parliament issues Protestation against James I’s excesses

1625
Death of James I; accession of Charles I

1628
Assassination of the Duke of Buckingham; the Petition of Right issued

1629
Charles I dissolves Parliament (and rules without one until 1640)

1634
Raising of ship-money; imprisonment of Prynne

1638
Scottish National Covenant drawn up

1639
End of the First Bishops’ War

1640
The Short Parliament; the Second Bishops’ War; first sitting of the Long Parliament

1641
Execution of Strafford; the Grand Remonstrance issued

1642
Beginning of the First Civil War; Battle of Edgehill (23 October)

1643
Battles of Roundway Down (13 July) and first Newbury
(20 September); Parliament signs Solemn League and Covenant with Scots; first meeting of the Westminster Assembly

1644
Battles of Cheriton (29 March), Marston Moor (2 July), Lostwithiel (2 September) and second Newbury (27 October)

1645
Introduction of the Self-Denying Ordinance and formation of the New Model Army; Battle of Naseby (14 June); execution of Laud

1646
Charles I surrenders to the Scots; end of the First Civil War

1647
Charles I imprisoned at Carisbrooke

1648
Start of the Second Civil War; Battle of Preston (17 August); end of the Second Civil War; Pride’s Purge

1649
Execution of Charles I; formation of the Commonwealth; Cromwell’s expedition to Ireland

1650
Cromwell leads campaign against Scots; Battle of Dunbar (3 September)

1651
Battle of Worcester (3 September); escape of Charles II

1652
Start of the First Dutch War

1653
Dissolution of the Rump Parliament; the Barebones Parliament; Cromwell becomes Lord Protector

1654
End of the First Dutch War

1658
Death of Cromwell

1660
Declaration of Breda; Restoration of Charles II; Act of Indemnity and Oblivion; marriage of the Duke of York and Anne Hyde

1661–5
Enactment of the ‘Clarendon Code’; Corporation Act (1661); Act of Uniformity (1662); first Conventicle Act (1664); Five Mile Act (1665)

1662
Marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza; foundation of the Royal Society

1665
The Great Plague; start of the Second Dutch War

1666
The Fire of London

1667
End of the Second Dutch War; fall of Clarendon

1670
Enactment of the second Conventicle Act

1672
Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence; start of the Third Dutch War

1673
The First Test Act; marriage of the Duke of York and Mary of Modena

1674
End of Third Dutch War

1677
Marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange

1678
The Popish Plot

1682
The Rye House Plot

1685
Death of Charles II; accession of James II; the Monmouth Rebellion; the Bloody Assizes

1687
James II dismisses Parliament and issues his first Declaration of Indulgence

1688
James II’s second Declaration of Indulgence; imprisonment of the Seven Bishops; birth of James’s son; overthrow of James II and arrival of William and Mary

1689
Start of joint rule of William III and Mary II; Bill of Rights and Toleration Act passed; start of the War of the Grand Alliance

1694
Death of Mary II; Triennial Act passed

1697
End of the War of the Grand Alliance

1701
Act of Settlement passed

1702
Death of William III; accession of Anne

PROLOGUE

How Weak?

I
t was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is.

The phrase had originated with Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament into English in 1526 and was given further prominence by the King James Bible. St Peter, having advised wives in some detail to ‘be in subjection to your own husbands’, urged these same husbands to give ‘honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life’, founding his remarks on those of St Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephesians.

By 1600 the phrase was freely employed – by Shakespeare amongst others
–
to denote either a particular female or the female sex as a whole. Throughout the century following, the words of St Peter, founded on those of St Paul, might form part of the Protestant marriage service as an alternative to a sermon: so that there was a fair chance that most women would listen to them at least once
–
on the most important day of their life, their wedding-day.

Man then was the stronger, woman the weaker vessel. That was the way God had arranged Creation, sanctified in the words
of the Apostle. About the precise nature of this female ‘weakness’ there was however a good deal less agreement.

Was woman
morally
weaker than man? And if she was accepted as such
–
for Eve’s audacious behaviour in the Garden of Eden certainly seemed to hint at some innate tendency to depravity in the female sex – what followed? Many of those of both sexes who accepted woman’s innate moral inferiority deduced from this that man had a particular duty to protect the weaker sex. Furthermore, it could be argued that for man, the stronger vessel, to sin was a good deal worse than for woman, the weaker – her own frail nature, while inevitably leading her towards temptation in that fatal way she had inherited from her ‘Grandmother Eve’, also to a certain extent excused her.
¹

It was a point made by the Rev. Robert Wilkinson in a wedding sermon of 1607, ‘The Merchant-Royal or Woman a Ship’, which provided a classic exposition of the duties of the married state: where sin was concerned ‘he that imposeth so much upon the Weaker Vessel, importeth much more to the stronger’. Equally if a husband was exacerbated by a particular fault of his wife’s: ‘Yet you must remember she is the Weaker Vessel: God therein exerciseth your wisdom in reforming, and your Patience in bearing it …’
²